


Fragile Tension

by maybeformepersonally



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, M/M, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 18:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16413275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeformepersonally/pseuds/maybeformepersonally
Summary: Phil’s family deals in espionage, which was working out just fine until he decided to shack up with a civilian.





	Fragile Tension

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Phandom Fic Fest Bingo, for the square “Spies”.
> 
> The title is a reference to the song by Depeche Mode.

 Phil was terrified. He and Dan had been enjoying an early night in when the lights went out. Phil’s internal alarms immediately went haywire. It could just be a power out… except that when he leaned back to look through the doorway and into the hall, and past that to the sitting room, he could glimpse through the far left sitting room window that the neighbours seemed to have no such issues. It could be a problem with the wiring, or even in the supply company… except that Phil had people whose jobs were to prevent such inconveniences in his day-to-day life, and he’d had professionals scope out this house before he and Dan moved in. The house had state of the art security, some of which wasn’t available to the public yet, so it was highly unlikely that someone had tampered with it by mistake, and the people who would have the skills to tamper with it on purpose… Phil was understandably concerned. 

 He’d immediately tried sending a distress signal to both Martyn and Corn as soon as he scoped their surroundings to find them as empty as they’d been before the lights went out. He didn’t want to think about how he might need backup, but he was no fool. He wasn’t jeopardising Dan’s life for anything, least of all his professional pride. He had no signal. He knew what he’d find but he tried Dan’s phone too, anyway. No signal. There was no way this was an accident. Fuck. 

 Dan had wanted to go to the garage by himself to check on the fuse box and that’s when Phil started to panic. In a cold and calculated way that only really came out when he was working, but still. Panic. Of course, he didn’t normally have his civilian husband-to-be with him on the job. Phil was wishing he hadn’t insisted on having this date night tonight, if only he’d been alone at home when whatever this was happened, with Dan safely out of the way of harm…

 Phil insisted they should stay together, so they should both go. Dan looked dubious, but Phil could see he was afraid too. Phil let some of his panic show and Dan caved immediately. He probably didn’t want to be alone either, though for different reasons than Phil. They moved slowly and silently through the house, Phil discreetly taking a couple of things on the way that he could use as weapons. He had switched to on-the-job mode automatically, so he didn’t realise, wouldn't realise until later, that most civilians wouldn’t be able to match him on stealth at a moment’s notice while sneaking through an almost completely dark house (even if it was your own house).

  _Who would send people to get him in his home?_ , thought Phil furiously as he moved through the main hall and into the next room. ‘A lot of people’ was sadly the answer, if only they knew where to send them. Fuck, if something happened to Dan because of him… this is exactly why he’d resigned himself to staying single way back when he’d got heavily involved in the lifestyle. That resolution had lasted an embarrassingly short time as soon as Dan came into the picture, though at least Phil could say he’d lasted a full twelve years with nothing but one-night-stands and short dalliances before that happened. As soon as he met Dan, however, it had gone flying out the window. For all his resolve, Phil had been smitten from day one.

 Martyn had run so many background checks, even once it became painfully clear that Dan was squeaky clean, that Phil had stopped trying to dissuade him after a while. Better to let him get it out of his system, it’s not like the results would change if Martyn kept it going. Eventually he’d calmed down and started to get to know Dan beyond Phil’s reassurances that _no, Martyn, he’s not a honey trap, he’s not a plant, he’s not a mole, he’s just a bloke I fell in love with, okay? Can you give him a chance, at least? Your checks keep coming up empty, and we both know how good you are at what you do. I also know you got the best of the best confirming your results. It’s not his fault our family is so dysfunctional, okay, and I_ really _like him._

 It hadn’t taken Martyn too long to warm up to him once he admitted Dan was a civilian and agreed to give him a chance, thankfully. Phil didn’t like to think about his relationship with his brother during those early days before he did. Those were dark days.

 It had taken weeks of Martyn coming up with nothing, the first and only screaming match he’d had with Martyn, _and_ Cornelia’s interference to wear him down.

 

_“I’m just worried about you,” the desperation in Martyn’s voice was almost enough to make Phil hesitate. Almost._

  _“I know you mean well, but you’re being irrational.”_

  _“You’re my baby brother!”_

  _“I’m 31 years old, Mar. I can take care of myself. I have a triple digit kill count, for fuck’s sake.”_

  _“And an almost non-existent relationship history,” Martyn cut in, relentless._

  _Phil winced, but he was done indulging Martyn’s overprotective act._

  _“Don’t you dare. I have more successful missions that most operatives twice my age. Just because I don’t date often doesn’t mean I’m helpless.”_

  _“I’m- I’ve just never seen you take a risk like this. No one is this clean, Phil, it reeks of a cover-up. And I’ve never seen you this… taken with someone before. I just want to make sure, okay? Can’t you stay away from him until then?”_

  _Phil sighed. He was tired of fighting with his brother. They’ve always been close, it was awful being at odds with him like this. He could understand Martyn’s initial mistrust, but at this point he was being unreasonable. If Martyn of all people hadn’t found anything incriminating yet then it was almost impossible that there was anything to be found._

  _“Mar, you’ve been investigating him for weeks now. There’s nothing there. And I do know how to take care of myself, you know, I can defend myself if it comes to that. Not that I believe it will-“_

  _“In a physical fight against an opponent, yeah. But what if he makes you fall for him and you can’t bring yourself to hurt him-“_

  _“You’ve been with Corn for over seven years now,” Phil’s voice was uncharacteristically cutting, but he was tired of this._

  _“We knew she was safe!” Martyn immediately counters. Cornelia doesn’t say anything._

  _“Mum and Dad are good, but they’re not infallible. She could have been a plant.”_

  _“She’s not-!”_

  _Phil rolled his eyes, trust Mar to completely miss the point as soon as Phil brought up Corn. “Obviously she wasn’t! What I’m saying is: you took a chance! Why should I not get the same leeway? Why can’t I take a chance? It’s a good chance. Odds are pretty good what with your extensive research on him. You know I’m right!”_

  _Martyn hadn’t budged then, but Phil knew from his pained expression that he had got through to him._

  _It’d take another week and a half of Martyn calling in every favour he could think of and several other professionals looking into it before he caved and agreed to give Dan a chance._

Now, Phil focused on the very real, very present threat to his fiancé’s life and wished he could have his big brother’s overprotective vigilance looking over both of them.

 By the time they crossed the three rooms between them and the room that led to the garage door, Phil was so on edge he’d swear the fear was a physical presence on the back of his head. Fuck, he’d have to kill in front of Dan. Soft, sweet, wonderful Dan who insisted that Phil catch bugs to release them outside instead of killing them, even the ones he was terrified of. Dan, who had slid into his life, and his heart, and his home, with his bright dimpled smile and his gentle heart, bypassing Phil’s qualms and concerns and better judgement like it was nothing.

 What would Dan even think…?

  _Creak. Click. Thud._

 He didn’t get to find out what Dan would think because Dan had shoved him safely out of the way around the corner and thrown _himself_ at the thicker shadows at the end of the hall and what the hell, Phil rolled and moved towards the scuffle, heart stuck in his throat, just in time to find several dark shapes on the floor, unmoving, and four more shapes fighting viciously in his parlour. Three of them had guns. Dan didn’t. In the half a second it took him to assess the situation, Dan had hit one of his assailants in the throat, jumped to execute a flawless thigh choke on another and stabbed the third one on his way down, landing on his feet as the three masked men fell to the floor.

 Phil just stood there, in shock.

 Dan wasn’t even out of breath. 

“Phil?” Dan whispered, looking at him, behind him, scoping the vicinity for more threats. He had a butterfly knife on his hand, how had Phil missed that? When did he get it?

 Dan turned to get a 360° look around, giving Phil a blurry look of his broad, lovely back, that back that Phil kissed whenever they cuddled with Dan as the little spoon, sprawled soft and warm and boneless in Phil’s arms; where Phil loved to bury his face first thing in the morning, before he has his first coffee, or any time he walked into the kitchen to find Dan cooking for him, for them, and he couldn’t resist wrapping his arms around his chest and burying his face at the back of his neck, breathing in Dan’s scent and squeezing him against himself. And suddenly, all Phil could think of was Martyn’s warnings, Martyn’s _questions_ , Martyn’s worries, _what do you even know about him? Did you tell him anything about our work? Don’t you think it’s suspicious he shows up when we’re pulling probably the biggest mission we’ve even been involved in and just conveniently asks you out?_

 Dan turns on the light, the little click of the light switch superimposed with the click of Phil taking off the safety on his gun.

 

 He can see Dan freeze for a moment, then turn around to look at him.

 Phil’s face is completely blank. He’s worked very hard to perfect that blank look.

 A near imperceptible sound to his right calls his attention, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Dan’s wide, startled ones as he moves his hand and shoots the remaining assailants before they can creep in on them. He’s pointing the gun back at Dan in two seconds flat, long enough for him to make a move, Phil knows now, but Dan doesn’t. Dan is still completely frozen, staring Phil down.

 Phil doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know if he could even shoot him, even if it turns out Martyn was right about him all along, but Dan takes the decision off his hands when he deflates and moves back against the wall, one step away from Phil, and slowly extends his arm to drop the knife he’s been holding on top of the decorative vanity desk there. They’d had an ‘argument’ about it. Dan had seen it and immediately wanted it and Phil had said it was too expensive and completely useless, it wasn’t even big enough to store things in. He’d caved, of course. He’d wanted to buy Dan all the useless, expensive things he craved, had wanted to spoil him.

 “Okay,” his voice is a whisper still, but Phil can hear it tremble despite the volume. “Do it.”

 Phil doesn’t talk, doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He just stares blankly at the man he’d sworn to love and protect and cherish as he points his gun straight to his head.

 “Get it over with. I don’t want to know. If it wasn’t real… I don’t want to know.”

 Dan’s expression felt like a physical kick in the gut. Phil knew those eyes, knew what Dan looked like when he was trying, desperately, to hold back tears. He’d seen him look sick, look scared, look exhausted, but he’d never seen him look _shattered_ before.

 Phil never really stood a chance.

 After Phil puts the gun down, his senses going full-on hyperactive work-mode and assuring him there’s no other threats lurking around, just Dan. Just Dan. Something in Phil breaks, something like his composure, maybe, or possibly his heart, and he has to exercise all of his hard-earned discipline not to burst out crying where he stands.

 He’s clutching Dan in his arms in the next second, holding him tighter than is probably comfortable, but he knows Dan doesn’t mind by the way he melts into him, and damn it, if he really _is_ a plant then Martyn was right because Phil already knows he’s going to let Dan kill him if he tries.

 “I can’t. But I need… I need to know. It wasn’t- it was real, for me. It was real.”

 “Me too. It’s real for me too, Phil, I love you-“

 “Tell me. Everything.”

 “Okay,” Dan is clearly trying to pull himself together, and Phil is distantly impressed because all he wants to do right now is sink into Dan’s chest and not move for the next few hours. “But we need to go. Now.” Phil made a noise of protest, he didn’t want to let go of Dan, but then Dan let out a shaky breath and said, “There might be more coming, or outside, they could call reinforcements-”

 “You're right.” Phil acquiesced. He still took a few long seconds to disentangle himself. At least Dan seemed just as reluctant to let him go.

 “Phil-” Dan interrupted himself and made a face as a thought occurred to him. “Oh god, is that even your name?”

 “No, my real name is Kyle,” Phil intones with a terrible American accent. He might be having some kind of mental breakdown.

 Dan stared back at him with a blank expression that told him he was aggressively suppressing some kind of reaction, and the visual was so _familiar_ it eased something in him and that coupled with the relief of the adrenaline of the last few minutes, made him burst out laughing. He sounded hysterical. He probably looked insane.

 “Yes, my name is Phil what the hell, Dan?”

 “Oh.”

 “Is your name not-?”

 “No, of course it is.”

 They stared at each other some more, until Dan grabbed his hand and moved them to the garage.

 Phil tried not to startle too badly when Dan picked up some hitherto hidden weapons on the way, and instead busied himself with doing the same.

 

After a few minutes of riding in silence, Dan was the first to break.

Phil knew he would, he could see his agitation growing. Phil was still too busy processing his new reality.

“You almost fell flat on your face when we first met!” Dan demanded out of nowhere, bewildered. He was driving them away from the house, but his focus was understandably mostly on Phil and the revelations of the last few minutes.

 “I was nervous! You’re _very_ attractive!” Phil defended himself, and the domesticity of it felt like a balm to his metaphorical open wounds. They sounded exactly like this when they disagreed about what painting would look best in the master bedroom, back when they had just moved in together.

 Dan shot him an utterly disbelieving look, mouth open and eyes squinting, and Phil felt he had been entirely justified, because if his boyfriend could look this attractive when he was pulling that face and immediately after rocking the foundations of Phil’s world, then no warm-blooded male-attracted person could be expected to function normally when faced with peak Summer Dan in his white skin tight tank top and his taut black tracksuit trousers which exposed his delicate ankles and hugged his thighs just so, and his silver hoop earring and his luxurious mane of wild chocolate brown curls and he was only human, okay? And gay. Very human and very gay. Phil maintained that he’d done well, considering.

 

 Almost exactly one year later, on a joint mission (and they only pull joint missions by then, they will not agree to be away from each other unless absolutely necessary), Dan is seething with jealousy watching his husband seduce some poor schmuck. 

He is also very turned on. It only makes him angrier.

 “You never did that with me,” Dan comments later, once they're out, mission completed and objectives met, when Phil is sprawled out comfortably next to him in the enormous plush red sofa at the hotel room where they’ll be spending the night, before going home. He's been looking at something in his phone for a couple minutes now.

 “What?” his husband asks, distracted.

 “You never pulled those honey trap skills of yours on me.”

 Not even in the early days. Granted, the initial impression Phil had left on him when he slipped into Dan’s life - literally - rather clashed with the suave worldly seductress he'd just watched Phil put on and then off like a second skin. But Dan had seen enough to know… Phil was _good_ , exceptional even, and he could have made it work with a few adjustments.

 But now, Phil is sputtering at him, visibly offended for some reason that escapes Dan. He’s so expressive; Dan’s always loved that about him.

 “Of course not!”

 A little frown finds its way to Dan's brow without his permission. “Why not?”

 Phil just makes a high, distressed noise and a lot of hand motions for several seconds. Dan stares at him appreciatively. His quiff is still damp from his shower and drooping a bit, and he’s clad in nothing but the two large fluffy white hotel towels. He’s ridiculous. Dan loves him.

 “ _Because_!” Phil manages to sputter out eventually.

 “Because what?” Dan asks, at a loss. He can tell Phil is genuinely mildly upset about whatever it is, but he can't figure out what it is.

 “Because!” Phil repeats, “You weren't a _mark_!”

 “...I mean, yeah.” They'd talked about this. Extensively right after the revelation of their secret identities came out. “But,” here Dan hesitates, but he knows they need to talk about it.

 “But you liked me. _Really_ liked me, you said. You told me you thought I was gorgeous. That you were so mesmerized that you walked into that potted plant…?”

 He greedily took in Phil’s blushing face and spared a little amused smile at the knowledge that even after all this time, after everything they’ve been through together, he could still make Phil this flustered.

 Phil sighs. “I _did_.” It's said quietly but firmly. The words hold a conviction that soothes into Dan's bones like warm cocoa on a winter night.

 “Fuck, Dan, I walked into a fucking potted plant because I was so entranced with you I wasn’t watching where I was walking. I'm a trained psy ops agent.”

 Dan couldn't help the little smirk at that, nor the warm glow spreading over his chest.

 “But you were- I liked you! I mean, _I_ liked you. I wanted… I wanted you. For the first time in a while, I wanted something for myself.” Dan can see him sink back into the seat with a long exhale, and he takes the hand extended to him and lets Phil pull him next to him. “I didn't want to… to approach you like a mark. I didn't want to entice you with some made up persona. I wanted to get to know you. As myself.” He takes another deep breath. “I wanted you to get to know _me_. And to like _me_.”

 “Oh.” Dan’s response is small. He stays quiet for a while after that, digesting the revelation, his fingers trailing up and down Phil’s arm absent-mindedly.

 “…Phil?” Dan breaks the silence after a few minutes.

 “Yeah.”

 “We're going to roleplay that though, right?”

 Phil laughs good-naturedly.

 “You will be the irresistible honey trap and I can be the hapless mark, who's hopeless before your worldly charms…”

“Okay, okay,” he's still laughing.

 “And I can be properly enchanted and-”

 “You won’t be, though, you’ve been with me for over two years now.”

 “…whatever makes you think that knowing what you can do in bed will make me _less_ likely to fall to my knees in worship?

 “Shut up.”

 Dan wasn’t deterred by the words, as Phil was giggling as he said them, and he could read the grin on his face. That was his self-satisfied, proud grin, the one that was almost a smirk. The one he got when someone tried to flirt with him in front of Dan and Dan got possessive. The one he got when Dan got more needy and whiny than usual and he not-so-secretly loved it.

 Yeah, Dan was going to be crossing off another fantasy from his bucket list soon.

Phil pulled him closer by his shirt to kiss the obnoxious grin off his face, and Dan knew he’d won.

  

Phil would have nightmares about the night when everything came out for the rest of his life. Sometimes it just plays out like it did in reality. Sometimes it’d be different in some way. The worst one is the one where he presses the trigger. Sometimes Dan screams at him, tells him he doesn’t love him, tells him he never did, that he was a job, that he’s glad it’s over. He doesn’t mind that one so much. In others, Dan tells him he _used_ to love him, so much, but he can never trust Phil again (“You broke my heart. Might as well kill me. You’ve already killed _us_ ”). In some of them, Martyn shows up and it’s him that shoots Dan (this is the one that’s guaranteed to make him wake up shaking, because it’s always _so real_ , and it could have so easily been true).

 He’ll have these nightmares for the rest of his life and every time it happens, when he wakes up in a cold sweat, or when he’s woken up by the tears that start falling from the corners of his eyes, when he wakes up shaking, feeling like his stomach’s dropped or like there’s an alarming tightness in his chest, every time it happens, every single time, he’ll wake up and reach for his husband lying next to him, in _their_ bed, and he’ll bury his face in Dan’s chest, or Dan’s neck, or Dan’s gorgeous brown curls, and he’ll let himself cry for a bit until he’s calmed down enough to go back to sleep or to get up and face the day. Dan almost always wakes up, and he often holds him close and rubs his back or his sides comfortingly while Phil tries to calm down. He always whispers soft encouragement and gentle assurances, ‘I love you so much’s and ‘shh, it’s okay’s and ‘I’ve got you, I’m here’s. And every single time it happens, Phil will be desperately, unspeakably _grateful_.

 Grateful that he gets to have this, that he got to _keep_ this. That he didn’t _completely_ fuck it up. That Dan’s here still, by his side, in his arms, in their bed, safe and warm and _alive_ and still every bit in love with Phil as they were back when they decided to move in together, as they were in their first anniversary, as they still were, despite everything, that day when Phil confronted Dan with a gun in his hands and other weapons hidden on his body as backup, in the hall of the home they built together. He’ll cry and he’ll hold Dan tight and he’ll be _grateful_.

 He’ll be grateful for Dan, who he met, improbably, by sheer luck, and was immediately enamoured with despite knowing next to nothing about him, all those years ago. Dan, who even more improbably seemed just as enamoured with Phil’s awkward charm and general weirdness, and even asked him to go on a date with him. Dan, who’d always been there for him, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, as the minister said at their wedding.

 Most of all, he’d feel grateful for Dan’s incredible courage. He’ll be grateful that Dan was so brave when Phil couldn’t gather enough courage or faith or optimism to trust Dan first. And he’ll remember what Dan told him that first time Phil opened up about the nightmares and told him all this.

 Dan said, “I’ll always be there so you don’t have to be brave.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Like/reblog this story from tumblr [here](https://maybeformepersonally.tumblr.com/post/179439657015/fic-fragile-tension)!


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